MS. STAMBAUGH: The first memorial is for Janet
Jacobs, written by Mary Grant, her successor at the Ellis
School. Mary couldn't be here tonight.
Educated at Northfield School and at Oberlin College, Janet
Jacobs obtained her master's degree from Radcliffe College.
She taught history and English at Northfield, served as an
administrator at Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and
then returned to Northfield to teach and to serve as dean.
She was lured to Ellis in July of 1971 and led the school for 15
years until her retirement in 1986. She maintained close
contact with the school and died on January 15, 2007.
Janet Jacobs was extraordinarily important to Ellis. She
built the endowment, she saw to the building of a separate middle
school, she established more scholarships, and she launched an
after-school program for lower schoolgirls that remains immensely
popular to this day. In fact, little girls are known to beg
their mothers to let them stay at Ellis for "after school" even
when their mothers are able to care for them at home.
Perhaps her most enduring contribution was the establishment
of an endowed fund for faculty growth and development, our JEP
Fund. Since it began, Ellis faculties have been able to
access thousands of dollars for conferences, workshops, graduate
study, and even travel.
Janet Jacobs was equally important to other heads of
schools. She was tapped for committee and board service by
national organizations including the Headmistresses, the National
Association of Principals of Schools for Girls, and the National
Association of Independent Schools. She gave good advice to
her successors at Ellis, never hovering, but always making herself
available.
Early in my first headship, in fact, I talked with Janet about
a school problem that was bothering me. It was one of those
complicated issues involving students, teachers, parents, letters,
lawyers, and administrators. I was pretty sure I knew what I
wanted to do, but I wanted a neutral party, someone who understood
Pittsburgh with whom I could test my ideas. So I turned to
Janet. She listened to me and then asked me the question,
"What do you think you ought to do?"
When I told her, she said, "That is the right thing to
do. Do what is right."
Perhaps in that way, Janet was "old school," and if she was,
she was "old school" in the best ways. Her conviction that
the best thing to do was the thing that was morally right and
true, her loyalty and her loyalty to the programs of girls'
schools, her fairness and decency, and her unfailing hard
work.
Now, I don't want you to think that she was some prissy
headmistress. She had a nice sense of humor. One
evening she invited a young faculty member to dinner along with
his wife, with whom she had a distant family connection.
Janet wanted to be sure they felt comfortable, so she offered them
a drink. There's a theme here. The young faculty
member, wanting to do the thing that would seem proper, said,
"I'll have a small glass of wine."
"That's fine," said Janet. "As for myself, I'll have
scotch."
In many ways, Janet Jacobs was thoroughly modern. Her
belief in the education and empowerment of women was one
way. She believed in education not just to get a piece of
paper, but for a life of service. She gave early and
emphatic support for diversity. She saw the city as a
classroom and expanded the field trip program, and she was one of
the first educators to promote the idea of global studies, a
project even more significant in these times.
And now Janet has one more project -- heaven. In
thinking about this resolution and the passage from St. John's
Gospel, "In my Father's house there are many mansions," I found
myself wondering what Janet might think. Would Janet start
throwing her weight around, suggesting a new middle school here, a
mini gym there, a program for angel development over here,
perhaps?
I doubt it. Not right away, at least. Janet was not one
to go rocketing around shaking things up and forcing her opinions
on others. I think she will first make herself at
home. Perhaps she will sit in the entryway, as she loved to
do at Longwood, welcoming guests and newcomers with her warm
smile. I think she will look back at Ellis, at Northfield,
at Wilson, at the many homes she made for teachers and students
during her lifetime. And I pray that she may dwell in
happiness, the happiness she created by opening the doors to the
"mansions" of education to hundreds and hundreds of girls and
young women.
Amen.
***************
MARY HINCKLEY CRANE
MS. STAMBAUGH: The next resolution is for Mary
Hinckley Crane. Mary Hinckley Crane, former headmistress of
Abbot Academy, died on April 29, 2007, at the age of 92.
Born in Boston in 1914, Mary spent her early years there and
summered in Barnstable on Cape Cod, where she maintained a
lifetime home. A graduate of Winsor School, she spent the
ensuing year as a Saltonstall scholar, attending classes at the
Sorbonne and traveling in Sweden, Italy, and Greece. When
she returned after her year abroad, she attended Bryn Mawr
College, from which she graduated in 1937, having majored in
classical archeology. She took classes and volunteered at
the Fogg Museum before marrying Alexander Crane. They had
four daughters, before his untimely death in 1953. She
taught for two years at Barnstable High School before teaching at
Abbot, where she became headmistress a year later.
She hired me in 1961 and became a lifelong role model.
As a young classics teacher (I was 20 when I began), I stayed at
her house with her daughters while she attended Headmistresses and
NAPSG. She whetted my appetite. From her I developed a
love for Rhodian pottery, cooking, gardening, and voracious
reading. She treated me like a member of the family, even
letting me in on the family call, "cooey," which she said with a
smile whenever she saw a family member or me. Later on, when
I was wondering whether I had what it took to be a head, she
encouraged me and took pride in my accomplishments.
From her tenure at Abbot, she became head of Pierce College in
Athens, and then returned to Winsor, where she taught for seven
years, prior to managing the Boston office of Pierce
College. She lived for a time in New Mexico and Colorado, to
be near two of her children. She loved her daughters, 12
grandchildren, and numerous nieces, nephews, and cousins.
She was one of those people who grew old with a broad
vision. She could and did entertain the new century and
world, putting her arms around diversity, new ideas, and
nonconformity as well as ancient history. Her smile and
chuckle lit up a room. She could see the person a child
would become and had enormous patience with the growing-up
process. We would all do well to emulate her kind,
sensitive, and supportive self.
*******************
THOMAS A. WOOD
MS. STAMBAUGH: The next is for Thomas A. Wood,
written by David Felsen, who also could not be here. This
remembrance draws heavily on Clayton Farraday's History of Friends
Central School, 1845 to 1984, A Memoir, by Thomas A. Wood,
entitled Friends Central School, 1971 to 1987, and conversations
with trustees, administrators, and faculty who worked with Tom and
knew him better than I did.
In January of 1971, Thomas A. Wood became headmaster of
Friends' Central School. Tom was a Chester County Quaker, a
member of the Westchester, Pennsylvania, High Street
Meeting. He attended Choate and graduated from Haverford
College with an AB in English literature. After three years
at Birmingham University in England, he received his Ph.D. in
Elizabethan literature, writing his thesis on the influences of
Shakespeare on early 17th century poet-dramatists. He
subsequently taught at the Hill School, Athens College, and
Exeter. Prior to coming to Friends' Central, he was
assistant headmaster and principal of upper school at Friends'
Academy in Locust Valley.
Tom Wood was a strong headmaster with vision, foresight, keen
intelligence, and a remarkable eye for talent. During his
tenure, Friends' Central became a stronger school and benefits
today from his legacy. His final and by far the most
significant achievement at Friends' Central in the past half
century was the acquisition in 1987 of the Montgomery School
campus, which led to the development of the Friends' Central lower
school there and the growth of overall enrollment from 630 to
around 1,000. But as a balance, Tom always understood that
great schools come from great people, and he took pride in his
appointments. His memoir is mainly a testimony to the able
trustees, administrators, and faculty he drew to the school. In
referring to them he wrote, "Having had their help over the years
made all the difference. It reminds me of the Casey Stengel
rule about getting good people. 'I know I'm a better
manager,' Casey said, 'when Joe DiMaggio's in center field.'"
Tom took the initiative in developing many facets of Friends'
Central, but one example is particularly revealing of his unique
and dramatic style of leadership. In a section of his memoir
entitled "The Arts," he wrote, "Plays put on by the faculty were
well-established by the time I came to the school, but they were,
I was told, half-hearted, highly amateur attempts which amused the
students but didn't show off the faculty in an impressive light,
to say the least. So," Tom wrote, "I decided to direct the
musical Guys and Dolls in the winter of 1973, the first such
undertaking for the faculty." He goes on, "Thus there began
a long line of faculty musicals, and they turned out to be very
unifying experiences for the faculty in upper, middle, and lower
school, as teachers worked together and became better
acquainted."
A key member of that production was Jim Davis, Friends'
Central's current director of music and head of the arts
department, whom Tom hired 35 years ago after interviewing 22
candidates for the job. Jim vividly remembers Tom telling
him that they would be putting on Guys and Dolls, and that Jim
would be handling all the music. When Jim demurred and said
he preferred Mozart, and was interested in opera rather than
musicals, Tom said, "My dear boy, we are putting on Guys and Dolls
and you will be handling the music." And that was that.
And apparently, in the same fashion, Tom personally selected
the large cast from the faculty of all three divisions.
Today Jim Davis is the enthusiastic and masterful director of the
school's musicals and, by his own admission, the beneficiary of
Tom's seeing a certain latent talent in him.
One final vignette: Joe Ludwig, hired by Tom in 1977 and
current associate headmaster and lower school principal at
Friends' Central, recalls a conversation with Tom about
vulnerability and death. Tom stated that when he died, he
did not want a memorial service. He told Joe that when Bob
Hope's children asked their father whether he wanted to be buried
or cremated, he replied, "Surprise me."
Two days after Tom's death, word came to the school that Tom
had been very explicit in his last wishes. Thus, on December
16, at 3:00 p.m. at Friends' Central School, there was, in the
manner of Friends, a memorial service for Thomas A. Wood. He
also designated four speakers for that event. Headmaster/director
right to the end.
******************
JOHN CHANDLER, JR.
MS. STAMBAUGH: The final resolution is for John
Chandler, Jr. John Chandler, Jr., was the Gary Cooper of the
secondary educational world. By that I mean he was the
strong, silent type. Born on October 18, 1920, he grew up
with three siblings on Meadowbrook Orchards Farm in
Massachusetts. Class of 1938 at Groton, he graduated from
Yale in 1942, and just as he and his fiancée, Fay, were on
their way by train to their engagement party, they heard of the
attack on Pearl Harbor. They married in 1942, before he
joined the Navy and entered World War II as an officer aboard the
destroyer the USS Bell, in the North Atlantic and South Pacific
theaters. According to his nephew, John R. Chandler,
headmaster of Robert College in Istanbul, whom I now quote, "All
three of the boys were similar in appearance -- tall, angular,
with their Navy haircuts and in temperament reserved, thoughtful,
but with a delightful ironic sense of humor which one would often
only catch in the twinkle of an eye or a characteristic downturned
grin. There's a wonderful picture of the three boys,
probably postwar, dressed identically in Navy deck wear.
They were a handsome group. I also carry the image in my
mind of the three of them standing together at their father's
funeral, tall, erect, dignified, and with tears streaming down
their faces. Chandlers tend to carry their emotions deep,
and don't show much. It was a powerful moment."
After his war service, John spent two years as an assistant
dean at Yale before going to Grosse Point University School in
Michigan in 1949. In his 14-year tenure, he merged two schools,
expanded the campus by adding new lower school facilities, and
became widely admired by faculty, staff, and the community at
large. A former student wrote, when he heard of his death,
"He inspired confidence that all would be okay."
After he left Grosse Point University School, now known as the
University Liggett School, he came to NAIS as president, with Cary
Potter as his vice president. However -- and I'm indebted to
John Esty for this -- in a Gothic turn of events, John Chandler
recognized that Cary Potter would be even better as
president. He resigned to allow that to happen, and Cary
Potter turned around and appointed John as vice president in the
newly vacated post. And that team, in John Esty's words,
functioned for the great benefit of independent schools for the
next 14 years.
In life beyond education, he was a lifelong rower, having
rowed at both Groton and Yale. He participated in many Head
of the Charles regattas where he rowed an Alden shell, and was
proud to be a member of the Union Boat Club in Boston. It is
not surprising that he chose a village in Maine on the coast as
his home away from home.
A nephew writes, "The common denominator for all of that
generation, as well as their children, grandchildren, and
great-grandchildren, was and remains Small Point, a beautiful
place, and a place for rest and spiritual renewal. At a time
when I was experiencing turmoil, John wrote a superb letter about
going for a walk on the beach to sort out his feelings. It
was beautifully crafted and its message has stayed with me.
Small Point has been a constant in most of our lives and it
certainly was for him and the family. There were also a
number of school gatherings there, as I remember. His family
was centrally important to him, and they came together -- and
still do -- in Small Point."
In answer to my question of how his uncle may have influenced
him, John R. Chandler wrote, "He was certainly an influence on my
life, although I do not remember him ever giving particular advice
except not to be in too much of a hurry. What I do remember
vividly was a cruise on Nat French's schooner, Alamar, while I was
still in college, with John, Nat, and Torch Parkman. Simply
watching these three in action, listening to them, seeing them let
their hair down in each other's company, sharing jokes as well as
deeply thoughtful reflections, was a profoundly significant
experience and probably did more to inspire me toward a career in
education than almost anything else I can remember."
There are undoubtedly in this room a number of people like me
who were taught the fine art of administering by John Chandler,
Jr., at the New or Experienced Heads NAIS workshop in the 1970s.
It was the era of the three Johns: Matthews, Seiler, and
Chandler. They demystified much, alarmed some, and sent us
off to shepherd our flocks.
John died on Christmas Day 2007. He left a great
legacy: Five children, 12 grandchildren, and nine
great-grandchildren, along with a number of nieces and
nephews. Along with living on in his family, I suspect his
tenets continue to reverberate at Groton, in Istanbul, and in
Grosse Pointe, and wherever his pupils and colleagues reside.
Now I invite you to stand and let us observe a memorial
moment in honor of these four colleagues.
Thank you.
MS. FORD: Thank you, Blair. We're going to
take a five-minute break and then reconvene for our keynote
speaker. Thanks.